Ah, “healthy and durable democratic growth.” The assumption is that there such a thing exists. It depends, I suppose, on one’s concept of “durable.” Majority-suffrage democracy at the state level has been around less than two centuries — even in the Anglosphere — and universal suffrage was only realized when the United States ended the political oppression of the descendants of the freedmen.

How healthy and durable has democracy proven since then? How much so will it be seen to have been fifty or a hundred years from now?

Again, we seem to be taking Churchill’s unsupported assertion as an axiom.

Greetings Mr. Mead,
Surely, the democracy deficit is not confined to “the east”, but rather it goes to the heart of Brussels itself, which excels at playing favorites in an amoral fashion, losing more and more legitimacy with each appeasement of anti-democratic forces in the Balkans. A perfect example is the Republic of Macedonia, which has been terrorized by NLA rebels, only to be rewarded for their bloody work by the EU with the Ohrid Framework Agreement. The country has also been politically terrorized by the Hellenic Republic since 1991 for the great “crime” of challenging the nationalistic myths in Athens, and the EU is there every step of the way, supporting Greek jingoism at the expense of so-called “European ideals”.

The president of our own 200+ year old democracy has spoken fondly of how great it would be to have dictatorial powers (as in China) to solve the country’s problems and you are worried about Eastern Europe?

Actually what’s worrying is that the president and many of the top commentators on his side (Tom Friedman most prominently) seem to have lost faith in democracy and yearn for a less inefficient system and no one seems to notice!